Poems, Musings, Quotes and Prayers by Dennis Ference

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Now

Let the sum
of all the moments of love
you have ever known
strip you naked
of roles and titles
wounds and triumphs
and breathe you
into the singular
present moment
where nothing
can weigh you down,
where nothing exists
but the blissful
lightness of Being.

in my seventh decade:
truth flows more fluently
into beauty
beauty into compassion
compassion flows
into being
being
into presence and
presence
into
the oneness
that is
the fullness
of
Love
out of which we all
emerge
to which we all
return.

Each day, before the sun rises
I cast my lot with the believers–
those who have come to know
that there is a Source within
from which all things emerge,

which does not play
by our rules and constraints.
It is Mystery, sometimes
soothing mother, often
maddening jokester,
always larger than our vision
of what it should be.

When I awake, the birds
are still voiceless, the streets
not yet in rhythm with the duties
and desires of their denizens.
I sip from a steaming cup
to melt away the remnants
of the night’s lethargy and
burrow slowly into the stillness
of naked Being where
I listen and wait.

This is the place where
deeper meanings are discerned
and commitments are forged.
This is the place where healings
are announced and poems
are conceived. And for those
who would bow and surrender,
this is the grace of the Sacred
Now—divine and human
breathing as One.

Have you ever been fishing
with someone and it seemed
pointless to keep score?
when a congenial sun, feathery
breeze, and dancing water glitter
were the big catch of the day?
and words and laughter
came easy and harmonized
smooth as silk with the rustling
of the trees, drone of insects,
and song of the birds?
when everything was
nothing and nothing was
everything and the present
was the only time to be?

If so, my friend, perhaps
you were fishing with a saint,
or perhaps that was the day
you first bumped into
your own muse within.

May your kindness never
be a soulless reflection
of guilt, obligation, cultural
pressure, or desire to play
the favored, superior one.
Rather, may it be a fresh,
balmy fragrance silently rising
from a gentle and generous heart
deeply rooted in the lavish
garden of gratuitous grace
to anoint as holy the very air
we all breathe.